Audio Conferencing.

Explai­ning Audio Conferencing

Audio confe­ren­cing is one of the top ways for busi­nesses to cut travel costs and increase produc­ti­vity. And as there is no special equip­ment or know­ledge required to hold them, more and more offices are choo­sing audio confe­rences over the stan­dard busi­ness meeting.

What is Audio Conferencing?

An audio confe­rence, or tele­con­fe­rence, is simply when a meeting between several parties is held over the tele­phone instead of in person. The party insti­ga­ting the audio-confe­rence is known as the calling party and those joining the call are known as the parti­ci­pants. Depen­ding on the meeting’s objec­tive, these confe­rences are set up so that the calling party is either just a passive listener or can join in on the conver­sa­tion. A simple form of audio confe­ren­cing is three-way calling, where there are just three parties involved, and this is gene­rally a form of small busi­ness soft­ware used mainly by smaller companies.

Your Audio Confe­ren­cing Options

There are special audio confe­rence tele­phone sets that busi­nesses can buy if they plan on holding a large number of such confe­rences but normal land­line desk phones, mobile phones and compu­ters will also do the trick. There are two ways to set up an audio-tele­con­fe­rence: adding other call parti­ci­pants can either be controlled by the calling party, who calls them indi­vi­du­ally to add them, or the call parti­ci­pants them­selves can call into a confe­rence bridge to gain access. There are also special service provi­ders who manage audio confe­rences by main­tai­ning confe­rence bridges and allo­ca­ting special phone or PIN numbers to parti­ci­pants to enter for them to dial in to a confe­rence. These service provi­ders will either charge a monthly flat fee or will offer a pay-as-you-go system and will tailor their packages accor­ding to a busi­ness’s online colla­bo­ra­tion needs. An inno­va­tive new use for audio confe­ren­cing is live strea­ming or podcas­ting of confe­rence calls where there is a large listening audi­ence and members dial in only if they want to take part in the discussion.

Uses of Audio Conferencing

Audio confe­ren­cing is reco­gnized as the best way to increase produc­ti­vity by redu­cing time spent out of the office. It is also the chea­pest way to reach many people simul­ta­neously for busi­ness presen­ta­tions, online trai­ning sessions or stra­tegy meetings and busi­nesses are conti­nu­ally finding new and inno­va­tive ways to put this tech­no­logy to use. Audio confe­ren­cing is a great solu­tion for remote support sessions, when a tech support consul­tant is assis­ting a client with their computer problems.

Audio-tele­con­fe­rences are also a compo­nent of a busi­ness group meeting online as well as the well-known webinar. Pairing an audio confe­rence service with desktop sharing soft­ware can create a powerful web confe­ren­cing or team colla­bo­ra­tion solu­tion. Almost all US public corpo­ra­tions now report their quar­terly results to their stock analysts through confe­rence calls.